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- "They have the apple."
"They have the apple."
Translation:Sie haben den Apfel.
53 Comments
365
I believe that "den " is used instead of "der" because the apple is the subject of the verb Haben i.e. it is being "had". When a masculine object is receiving an action from a verb then the case changes from nominitive "der" to accusative "den".
No it isnt. It has to do with the cases. In accusative, which means that something is being affected, the masculine turns into den. Ich esse der äpfel? Nein, Ich esse DEN äpfel. Its hard to explain. Go on Leicht-Deutsch-lernen.com, it is an AWESOME website that teaches tons
the Nominative Case is the subject (i.e "Der Mann hat den Äpfel" here "Der Mann" is the subject.) and the Accusative case is the object (i.e the object that is in direct relation to the subject). In the example, "Der Mann" is the nominative and "Den Äpfel" is the accusative. I hope this helped! Keep Learning! (btw there's a better explanation in the tips section of "Acc. Case")
365
Dear GuilSobrinho. Yes I agree that in this example Apfel is the direct object of the verb 'haben'. I mentioned 'being had' as a way of explaining that it is the direct object of the verb (that is receiving the action - 'being had') and so therefore it takes the accusative. The thing that is "doing the action" here i.e. the subject is indeed 'Sie'. Maybe It would have been better if I hadn't mentioned 'the being had' part as for some people this makes it clearer and others more confused. The reason, I mentioned it is that if a sentence was using the verb 'sein' meaning the state of being (- to be) then the sentence would stay in the nominative case because there would be no real action. So if you say something simply 'is' something for example Das ist der Rote Apfel - (that is the red apple) it keeps the article in nominative but when something is being 'had' i.e. object of the verb 'haben' then it changes to accusative and hence der becomes den. I hope this helps
When it comes as object "der apfel" will be "den apfel".
It's der Apfel, den Apfel with capital A.
But not in the case of water. In both occasions it is used as "das Wasser" why?
Only masculine words change in the accusative case in German.
Feminine, neuter, and plural words always look the same in the accusative and in the nominative cases.
(For neuter words, this "nom=acc" trait is extremely old and is found in all the Indo-European languages I know of, from Greek to Russian and from German to Slovak. Even English has "he/him" and "she/her" but "it=it".)